


Imago

by Palpalou



Series: Cold And Soft As Satin [1]
Category: Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Missed Connections, Pre-Canon, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 02:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palpalou/pseuds/Palpalou
Summary: Mark Antony finds a marble bust and falls in love.





	Imago

**Author's Note:**

> Please accept my humble offering, marcus junius brutus/mark antony tag. I love you very much.  
Additional warning : No expertise in the era outside of high school latin lessons : we die like men.

It all started with a marble bust.

Mark Antony found it in one of the storage rooms of Caesar’s house. He wasn’t exactly supposed to be there, or at least not there alone, without one slave or another to corral him, watch him or distract him, but Caesar had said to think of this whole villa as his home, not just the set of rooms where he slept and occasionally had his lessons. And it wasn’t as if he was anywhere close to Caesar’ private apartments, the kitchens, or the slaves’ house, any place he had been explicitly forbidden and thus particularly interesting.

No, the storage room was nothing special at first glance. Dusty space, half-filled with unused or damaged furniture. The bust was on the ground, half-hidden behind a lame table and a tattered piece of cloth.

It was a boy’s head. About Mark Antony’s age, rather thin and angular, with a patrician nose that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the face. Antony dragged it out. It was well-made, intact. He wondered why it had been put away. There were other busts in the house, some of Caesar, gifts, some of important figures of Rome that served as illustrations to his occasional history lessons. Caesar would walk around the house with Mark Antony’s shoulder under his hand, explaining Rome, and he would stop and point two fingers at a bearded man’s stone face. “Here’s what he failed to consider.”

Antony couldn’t imagine what Caesar would have to say about that boy’s shortcomings.

He left the storage room shortly after on that day, his need to explore sated, but he kept thinking about the bust. He had quickly come to the conclusion there was no way the boy could be a historical character. His tutors would have never passed on the opportunity to give him an illustrious example around his age to emulate, in the hopes he would amend some of the behaviour that had started proving itself rebellious to correction by that point.

Further visits allowed him to discover the bust was of recent make, the stone neither chipped nor smoothed by age. He would run his fingers along the nose or follow the curls of the sculpted hair with his palm, and wonder.

After some time, he came to the unconscious decision that this was Caesar’s son. A son that had died young, probably, and this was a funeral bust, sculpted in remembrance then hidden away either at the strongest point of grief, or once grief had passed to leave only the bitterness of regret. He could have asked Caesar, but it came to him that maybe the dead son was why Caesar had taken him into his home and shown him what people insisted and he himself realised was such unusual largesse.

It made him wonder whether Caesar planned on adopting him at some point, then want to smash the bust for a bit. Instead, he secretly took it from the storage room and hid it under his bed from that day on. When there was no danger of being disturbed, he would lie on his bed with it in his arms, like a brother.

*

The second time Mark Antony came close to destroying the bust was the day he met its model.

Antony did not always stay in Caesar’s house. When Caesar was away, visiting friends or on campaigns, or when his mother missed him too much, he went and stayed for a few months in her country house. He wasn’t unhappy there, but it was boring. He would be petted and fawned over by his mother until she grew tired of how he had grown and how he looked so much like his father. Then he would spend his days hiding from the preceptors with his brothers and letting them show him around. They loved to hear about his life in Rome, and he enjoyed telling them about his wildest escapades, until he ran completely out of stories and started yearning to go back in earnest.

This year, Lucius and Gaius had begged him to let them come back with him. In his opinion, they were too young, but he remembered that he had been younger still when Caesar had taken him in, so he promised he would see what he could do. He was about old enough to start requesting some of his father’s money. Maybe he would buy a house for the three of them to stay in, and Rome would make men out of them as it had done him. He would need Caesar’s approval, and his help would not be remiss either, as he wasn’t quite sure how one went with buying property.

As the journey back was long, he sent a letter ahead to explain his project and request Caesar’s help. He put time in the wording and progressive exposition of his arguments, as he had been taught, feeling very adult and responsible.

He arrived at Caesar’s house with the night. A slave was waiting for him with a fresh set of clothes and a basin of water to wash the dust of the countryside off him, as usual. But instead of leaving him with a light supper in his rooms, the slave showed him to the part of the house Caesar reserved for his personal use. Caesar had a guest tonight, the slave explained along the way, and had requested that Mark Antony be brought to them if he arrived tonight. Antony sneered. He had no interest in Caesar’s friends, in general. His impression was that the “friends” of Caesar were either those fatuous enough to fall blindly for praise from a great man, or political rivals who considered social proximity the way _pancratium_ wrestlers considered a high-risk high-reward clinch. He was hungry, and he was tired, and he was slipping into a fierce sulk by the time he was ushered into Caesar’s study.

Caesar and his guest were sitting in chairs around a low table, both turning towards him. An oil lamp on the table lit their faces very precisely even as much of the room was left in shadows.

“Ah, Mark Antony!” Caesar was saying, rising at the same time as the other man. “Let me introduce you to my dear friend, Marcus – oh, or rather is it again… Quintus Servilius, ah, Caepio, Brutus ?”

The young man made a polite grimace. He had dark hair, a lanky face. Although he wore his toga like an adult, he was probably only a few years out of adolescence.

“Caesar is making fun of me. It’s Marcus Junius Brutus, of course.”

Antony could not have cared less what his name was at that moment. He knew that face, although he couldn't place it, he knew it like a long-lost childhood friend. Then it hit him. It was the marble bust, come to life and looking at him with a vacuously polite stare.

“Well met”, he said, mind working furiously. He felt weirdly offended. So this wasn’t Caesar’s dead son, obviously. He had heard of the Junii before, another of the major families of Rome. That did not explain at all how the stone image of one of their sons had ended up in one of Caesar’s storage room; it made it even more of an enigma. But above all, how pleasant that familiar face was, made honey-and-pink by the oil lamps and by Caesar’s wine. And how unpleasant those lukewarm eyes.

The servant was still waiting by the door, which meant that Mark Antony, having greeted his host and his guest, was supposed to take his leave for the night. He did, maybe a bit too stiffly, for Caesar’s raised eyebrow, but what did it matter? It would be explained away as tiredness.

In his rooms, he sprawled on his belly and dragged the bust out from under the bed.

He sat with it on his knees for a few minutes, silent and unmoving, nearly unblinking.

Then he put it back underneath among the cobwebs and he lay down, blinking at the ceiling. After some time, he rucked up his tunic and he touched himself until he came, and only afterwards did he fall asleep.

*

Brutus was an itch under Antony’s skin. After their short meeting the night he had come back from his mother’s domain in the countryside he obtained more information, mainly from the servants, because Brutus and Caesar spent their day mostly together, and only occasionally inside the house.

Brutus had been studying in Greece until recently; he had a home with his family in Rome but was saying with Caesar for a few weeks so that he could be introduced or reintroduced to the relevant political circles; Caesar was a long-time friend of the Junii family (Antony scoffed at that. Was Brutus Caesar’s son after all? But he would have to find other sources for rumours. Caesar had his household well in hand); Brutus was only a few years older than Mark Antony; and much wiser already, was the implicit judgment.

Antony scoffed at that too. If his various minders had hoped that Brutus’ example would have a calming influence on him, they were disappointed. During the two weeks of Brutus’ stay, Antony was completely unmanageable. Lessons were missed, curfews ignored, days spent out into the town following after Brutus. And when he was in the house, Antony lurked. It wasn’t shyness, rather tactical strategy. He felt that he should wait until Brutus was alone to introduce himself.

But Brutus was, it turned out, never alone.

When the first tree in Caesar’s garden turned yellow, Brutus took his leave. Antony watched them embrace warmly from the window of his room with no small measure of chagrin for a missed opportunity but the resolve to try again at the first occasion.

That same day’s afternoon, Caesar asked for him to be brought to his study.

On his desk, there was the letter Antony had sent on the journey back from his mother’s, and on Caesar’s brow, dark clouds.

He had completely forgotten about it, and at this moment he remembered as well that the slaves and the tutors reported to Caesar.

“I am not certain”, Caesar said, “that you are as much a man as you think you are. But although I welcome you in my home, I am not your guardian.”

Antony bit his lip but said nothing.

The rest of the conversation consisted in the writing of a few letters to be sent, to his mother, to a relation of Caesar who could help him with acquiring a house, then he was left to go back to his rooms and start organising his departure as Caesar had household matters to attend to.

Caesar had a system where no slaves were allowed into his private rooms except for one who owed him his life and was devoted to him body and soul. It was a way to ensure the safety of Caesar's secrets and self against spies or assassins. Antony had adopted the same custom when he had arrived into the house, on Caesar's recommendation. As he had no body slave, it theoretically meant he was responsible for the cleaning and care of his own rooms -- but after a few weeks of that regimen, Antony had reflected that any slave could be in his room as long as he himself was in there too. So Antony's rule to the slaves was that no one was allowed in his apartments without his explicit permission and presence.

There was a slave waiting at his door, twisting her hands in a frazzled manner.

Antony frowned.

"What are you doing here?"

"The master has misplaced something and has ordered for the house to be searched."

"My rooms as well?"

"The whole house, _dominus_."

He shrugged and pushed past her.

"Well, search, then. What is it he wants found?"

"A sculpture, from a young boy's head."

Antony blinked. He was standing by the bed, about to sprawl on it. He resumed his movement.

"Have you looked in the storage rooms by the kitchens?"

"I don't know, _dominus_. I will ask."

The slave looked around, over and under the bigger pieces of furniture. But Antony stayed sitting on the bed and stared at her with a faux-amiable face, and so she did not look underneath it.

Once she had left, he dragged out the bust. Should he bring it to Caesar? Should he put it somewhere the slaves would find it? Those were the best options. But he didn't want to. He had had it under his bed for more than two years and Caesar had never gone looking for it before, so what would have changed now? Doubtlessly Caesar would manage without it.

And this is how, a few weeks later, at the age of 15, Antony left Caesar’s house with the latter’s disappointment hanging over him -- and with Brutus’ bust which he smuggled out.


End file.
